They Know
by iwatchsunsets2
Summary: A moment is enough for anything to happen. They know that. They know. But by the time they realized it's happening, it's already done and before they can stop it, they've fallen into a lion's den, helpless and fearful. Their only option is to play Daniel. They can only hope and wish that nothing will harm them, and they will be protected while they're rendered defenseless.


I toss and turn, and turn again. When Soda lets out a groan of half-consciousness, I make myself stop. Still half-asleep, he stretches his arm across me, its weight a burden almost heavier than keeping my eyelids open. The open window teases me. All these stars coming out, the sun going into hiding just so everybody can sleep in peace, but I lay here buzzing with nerves unable to sleep no matter how tired I am.

I resist the nagging need to roll over.

A light sigh escapes my dry, chapped lips. As quiet as it truly is, the honesty is hidden in the silence of night in comparison. There aren't any car engines. No voices or screaming are audible. I don't hear any gunshots. There aren't any hoodlums crumpling under streetlights tonight. No rumbles are roaring to life in the midst of a rainstorm. Not even soft, whispered last words of weary hospital patients can be distinguished, at least not in my room.

Somewhere, though, somewhere there are those unheard voices of people who desperately need help or who have nothing left to help. Somewhere there's someone like Johnny, getting beat up by their father. Maybe they will go outside and lay by a fire smoking a cigarette. Maybe somewhere another hood with the same cold, misleading façade is falling apart, because for once they allowed themselves to love something, and that one thing was taken from them.

And maybe there is someone like me out there somewhere, mute with the loudest mind imaginable. That someone is sitting up thinking about the things, the people they've lost, and why they were so cruelly stolen and how they could have prevented it. They're thinking that they should've stayed home. They shouldn't have let themselves fall asleep so close to curfew. They should've let the children burn to death in the holy hell of a burning church. But just as me, they wonder what else would've gone wrong if they'd done all those things.

Three people would be alive, three lost souls without much hope left for them, with no better future coming at all.

Five innocent kids would be dead possibly, that is if the church fire wasn't their fault in the first place.

They wouldn't have gotten hit that night by their oldest brother for being late.

The tension would've kept building, though, piling and suffocating them until they finally broke.

Their friend may have died a pathetic death, killing himself off still as useless feeling as ever, and that friend would continue to hope that after they died, their parents would finally care, finally miss him.

Their gang member, the toughest of them all, bred straight from New York blood and first arrested at age ten, would soon follow, because no matter how the loss of the only thing he ever loved occurs, it still does.

And then they, like me, like to let themselves believe that maybe, just maybe, things really did work out for the best.

I turn over in my bed and let my eyes slowly close like the curtains of an empty window facing a brick wall. With lightness and darkness creating a captivating fireworks show on the inside of my eyelids, I let my eyes vacation for a moment, take a break from the exhausting task of keeping awake for just a moment.

But a moment is enough for anything to happen. They know that. They know. But by the time they realized it's happening, it's already done and before they can stop it, they've fallen into a lion's den, helpless and fearful. Their only option is to play Daniel. They can only hope and wish that nothing will harm them, and they will be protected while they're rendered defenseless.

As they should know, hoping has no effect on dreams. If anything, hope feeds them, the dreams, and turns them into nightmares, the more you fret, the more you'll soon regret. And soon regret, I did. In bed, awake again; tossing and turning, I try again, this time with even more fierceness than before. Every time gets a little harder, but my hothead doesn't seem to care about what my body has to say about the matter. So I sit there in the dark for hours more until the ghosts come to life, the voices are heard, that is until night returns again.

…..

**If you don't completely get this, don't worry about it because guess what! I wrote it, and ****_I_**** didn't understand all of it. I found it in my "Finished Stories" folder on my computer couldn't remember what it was about for the life of me and decided to read it. When I was done I was like… what…? Was I on drugs? But, if I did manage to make sense, please let me know in a reviews(I keep wanting to say comments, because I watch too many YouTube videos, so don't tease if I ever don't catch it like I did here!), so maybe I can remember as well. Or if you want, you may tell me about how it makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. You know, whatever floats your boat.**

**I don't own The Outsiders. Or the bible for that matter…**


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